So long, Singleton
Minor league first baseman Jon Singleton, who is serving a 100game suspension for his third positive drug test, is released.
The Astros released Jon Singleton on Monday night, disseminating a 20word statement to complete a cataclysmic fall for the power-hitting leftthanded first baseman once considered the organization’s best prospect.
“The Astros have released minor league first baseman Jon Singleton, effective today,” it read. “The club has no further comment on this.”
Singleton is serving a 100-game suspension for his third positive drug test. He is in the final year of a five-year, $10 million extension signed in 2014.
One of four players acquired by the Astros when they traded Hunter Pence to Philadelphia in 2011, Singleton had just 420 plate appearances in parts of two seasons with the club, hitting 14 home runs and striking out 151 times.
His career was sidetracked by multiple drug suspensions and failed drug tests for marijuana.
“At this point, it’s pretty evident to me that I’m a drug addict,” Singleton told the Associated Press in 2014 during spring training. “I don’t openly tell everyone that, but it’s pretty apparent to myself.”
A day later, Singleton attributed alcohol use, and some of his marijuana dependence, on depression.
“A little bit, yeah, (with marijuana), but more or less the alcohol,” he told the Chronicle. “And I wasn’t being successful in 2013, and I was looking for an escape.”
He was suspended for 50 games in January 2013 after a second positive test. Singleton entered an inpatient rehabilitation clinic.
“After I failed the second drug test, I couldn’t stop smoking weed. It was really bad,” he told the AP in 2014.
Ranked by Baseball America as the Astros’ No. 1 prospect in 2011, just after his trade to Houston, Singleton never made an opening-day roster. Last season with Class AA Corpus Christi, Singleton slashed .205/.376/.397 in 500 plate appearances.
Singleton was suspended for a third time in January of this year, a ban he’s still serving, for yet another violation of baseball’s drug prevention and treatment program.